As cybercrime has been taking centre stage over the last couple of months, even the largest news websites aren’t immune to being infiltrated. On Friday morning, news giant CNN announced on their website that a number of their social media sites had been hacked.
“The affected accounts included CNN’s main Facebook account, CNN Politics’ Facebook account and the Twitter pages for CNN and CNN’s Security Clearance. Blogs for Political Ticker, The Lead, Security Clearance, The Situation Room and Crossfire were also hacked,” the company announced.
CNN, owned by Time Warner, discovered the hacks almost immediately and have since deleted all unauthorised posts and have implemented measures to secure its webpages.
While no organisation has officially accepted responsibility for the attacks, some of the posts indicated that the Syrian Electronic Army was to blame. The group has in the past aggressively targeted major news organizations and activists, including the New York Times.
“Syrian Electronic Army Was Here…Stop lying… All your reports are fake!” read one of the posts on CNN’s Twitter account.
According to CNN, “the group also claims to have hacked other major American and British news organizations, as well as Columbia University and rights group Human Rights Watch.”
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
